Nolan Bushnell founded Atari in 1972 with the creation of the
video arcade game Pong and sold the company in 1976 to Warner
Brothers for $28 million. Later he pursued robotic technologies
with the pizza and gaming franchise company ChuckECheese. Nolan
is truly the father of video games, and his innovations paved the
way for affordable computer technologies that would beckon in the
computer age.

Jack Tramiel Founder
of Commodore and creator of the reorganized Atari
Corporation in 1984

Grew up in Poland during Nazi
occupation

Sons, Sam and Leonard worked with him at Atari
Corporation. Sam was CEO briefly.

Pioneer in the Computer Industry; creating computers
both with Commodore and later Atari Corp

Image Courtesy Fortune magazine, April 13, 1998

Jack Tramiel grew up in Poland during German occupation in
1939. During that time his name was Idek Tramielski. In 1955 he
founded Commodore, an importer and later manufacturer of adding
machines and typewriters. He took the name for the company from
his stint in the US Army from 1948 to the early 1950's. He
thought the name was clever, and commodore was a name not used by
any major company at the time unlike the terms general or
admiral. In 1962 Commodore became a publically traded company
with stock shares initially trading at $2.50 a share. In 1977
Commodore released its first computer and used affordability as
its prime selling point. In the next few years this strategy led
to computer prices being pushed down to nearly $200. Tramiel once
said in an interview with Fortune Magazine on April 13, 1998 that
"Business is war, I don't believe in compromising I believe
in winning." This pretty much sums up his strategy, TO WIN,
TO WIN,and TO WIN. In 1984 Jack Tramiel was forced to step down
from his position with Commodore. He later that year purchased
all Atari, Inc. assets from Warner Brothers except the arcade
gaming division. He reformed this company as Atari Corporation.
He focused Atari's attentions on the computer market heavily and
released the Atari 7800 home console system in 1986 and only
after the video game market was heavily dominated by Nintendo.
From 1993 to its demise almost all of Atari's attention was on
the home console based video game market. Jack ran Atari Corp
with the help of his eldest son Sam Tramiel ( who was CEO
briefly) and his second eldest son Leonard.

Steve Jobs and
Steve Wozniak
the founders of Apple computer worked for Atari in 1974